Oil Search aims to more than double production

OIL Search managing director Peter Botten, pictured, says its focus for this year is to deliver Papua LNG and PNG LNG for a three-train eight million tonnes cooperate development while moving the Pika unit in Alaska oil development into front-end engineering and design (Feed) phase.
“Successful delivery of these projects over the next five years have the capability to more than double our production up from around 30 million barrels per year this year to about 70 million barrels per year in 2024-2025,” he said.
“There are very few companies around the world that have the capacity to grow in this way.
“These projects are world-class and economically robust.
“We do have material competition in the LNG area, and we must continue to deliver our projects on time in order to secure our place in the market.
“We are planning to be in Feed for all these projects around the middle of the year with final investment decisions in 2020 and first production in 2023-2024.
“These projects will have a huge impact on the company.
“We will continue to build our capacities to manage these undertakings and acquire new skills and development in innovation, to keep us at the leading edge of what oil and gas companies can do.
“This is also true in the social development and sustainability areas.
“We are actively working on new ways to addressing engagement and development of the many young people in the areas in which we work.
“In our PNG operating areas, more than 60 per cent of our population are under 20.
“We must make sure that they have employment and opportunities to meet their potential.
“The stability in our operating environment is very much dependent on continuing what we do in our communities, but also add new programmes for new partnerships to address these new social challenges.
“Our focus is delivering progress on the major projects.
“We must also continue to improve performance on our operated oil business.”
Botten said this year would see a return of strong production performance with a range between 28 to 31.5 million barrels oil equivalent produced.
He said key objectives for 2019 included:

Improving the focus on personal and process safety;

reducing environmental incidents and targeting improvements in all safety environmental metrics for staff and contractors;

entering FEED phase of Oil Search’s three-train LNG expansion;

commencing Feed for the Oil Search-operated AGX projects aimed at providing oil and gas to the PNG LNG expansion train;